The present invention relates to a method for repotting plants, wherein a rootball provided with a plant is moved from a first rootball container to a second rootball container using a planting head.
Traditionally, the repotting of plants has been done manually. In doing so, the plant itself is held and the plant including rootball is lifted from the rootball container (such as a pot or recess in a tray), and is the rootball is transferred to another container (for instance a larger pot). It goes without saying that this is labor intensive work and thus expensive, for which reason it has been attempted to carry out the repotting mechanically, wherein not the plant but the rootball is held by means of pins which protrude into the rootball.
A disadvantage of the known method is that for a variety of plant species (like Gerbera, Zinnia, Begonia, Geranium), the damage to the above-ground plant parts may be greater than desired. The damage to the plant may adversely affect the market value. Reliably transferring and avoiding damage are somewhat at odds with each other. If the rootballs are not transferred reliably, that is to say if some of the rootballs are left behind in the first rootball containers, the saving of work will be partly made undone because then a person is needed to still transfer the rootballs that have not been picked up successfully.